I just did a quick search on abortion in the diaries and nothing showed up on this, so let me know if i'm repeating and i'll take it down.
Joan Ryan, a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle reports that last week appeals courts in San Francisco and New York again declared the 2003 law unconstitutional. She goes a little further, than just reiterating the decison though in a way you should all like. Alot.
Follow me.
"In passing this legislation,'' the president said during the signing ceremony, "members of the House and Senate made a studied decision based upon compelling evidence. ... (The procedure) involves the partial delivery of a live boy or girl, and a sudden, violent end of that life.
"As Congress has found, the practice is widely regarded within the medical profession as unnecessary.''
Every sentence was an outright lie. And last week, two federal appeals courts said as much, declaring the law unconstitutional. The two courts -- one in San Francisco, the other in New York -- were the fifth and sixth federal courts to reach the same conclusion since Bush signed the act into law.
In other words, the courts went Oprah on him. They exposed Bush and his anti-abortion cronies as liars and exaggerators, people who manipulated and sensationalized "facts'' to make their legislation impossible to resist.
And it gets better.
The "compelling evidence'' to which Bush referred -- namely, that this type of abortion is never medically unnecessary -- was false. The anti-abortion "experts'' on whom Congress based its "studied decision'' were doctors who had never performed or witnessed an abortion. One was not even an OB-GYN.
Unlike Congress, the courts heard testimony not only from Bush's parade of medical ideologues, but also from doctors who confront every day the complex medical conditions that pregnant women face and the difficult decisions they have to make. It was clear to all six courts that, contrary to what Bush and his allies claimed, the law would put women at risk: It would prohibit abortions they might need to prevent serious complications from diabetes, asthma or heart disease, to use a few examples.
She goes on to discuss the fact that the admistration certainly knew the law was unconstitutional, due to a similar Nebraska attempt being deemed unconstitutional and the fact that the law would not be just on "partial birth", but also any second trimester abortion. She states clearly that they are gaming the system in an attempt to shine negative publicity on the admittedly gruesome procedure and perhaps waiting for Scalito.
Read the whole thing, but here's the coup de grace.
Maybe lying is business as usual in Washington and I'm naive to be disappointed and angry. But out here, where real people grapple with the most wrenching and deeply personal decisions, the facts matter. If we demand the truth from some writer trying to land on the best-seller list, why do we expect so much less from our president and Congress?